My physical sufferings are not to be compared with the sufferings I see others endure, and endure cheerfully: this is a great shame and humiliation to me, because I have not learnt to suffer cheerfully: I am too easily undone by suffering and by the sight of suffering in any living thing; but although one may be a coward—that is to say, one may inwardly shrink from every kind of suffering,—one can be, and it is necessary to be, quite submissive; and to refrain from the slightest rebellion or selfishness—this is what God takes note of. What a difference there is between the selfish and the unselfish sufferer: how the one makes everyone around him miserable, wears them out body and soul; and how the other calls out all that is best in others and strengthens all that is best in himself! It is not so important whether we are secretly cowards or heroes; what matters is how we deal with sufferings when they come, what reaction we permit or encourage on their account in heart and mind and soul. There is nothing but suffering that can cleanse us, nothing but pain and misfortune which can so thoroughly convince us of our own nothingness, and break self-pride: joy will not do it; joy can do nothing more than refresh us after our sufferings, and in almost all lives we see how joy is made to alternate with sorrow: it encourages, it stimulates to further endeavours (this is the reason that God, at a certain stage of progress, gives extraordinary blisses, ecstasies, and so on), but it does not disperse our blemishes: the dispersal of spiritual blemishes is, as we know, the main reason of life in the flesh; it must be done, and the sooner the better: then we can finish, once and for all, with flesh existence. Righteous and very virtuous people may be able to dispense with Divine joys and consolations: it is doubtful if many sinners can—they require the confidence, the certainty, the enthusiasm which is naturally kindled by such experiences. So then we find that the vicissitudes of life, the endless daily trials, do not go because we find God. But His Grace comes, and when His Grace is with us wet or shine is all one, love and beauty gently sparkle everywhere; and then the heart cries out to him, Every day is like a jewel, every day I see the whole world decked and garlanded with all the beauty of Thy mind: each tree, each flower, each bee or bird tremulous with the life and wonder of Thy creative ingenuity! Each day is a new jewel set upon the necklace of my thoughts of Thee.
VIII
One of the trials that we have to endure as beginners is a joyless, flat, ungracious condition; a kind of paralysis of the soul, a dreary torpor. When we would approach God—pray to Him—He is nowhere to be found: He has disappeared, and everything to do with finding Him is become hard work, such hard work that it suddenly seems to us quite unprofitable: we suddenly remember a number of outside things which we would far sooner do: we try to pray, but the prayer goes nowhere-in-particular; it has no enthusiasm, no force behind it: has prayer then suddenly re-become a duty? This is terrible; what shall we do—shall we ask God to help us? When we do, we do it in so halfhearted a manner that our prayer feels to merely float around our own head like some miserable mist. We feel certain that this joyless, withered state will endure to the end of life on earth (the conviction that our unhappy condition is permanent is characteristic of all severe trials, because if we supposed the condition or difficulty only momentary it would not produce a sufficient trial, and consequent effort to overcome it on our part). This trial (though it may not always be a trial, but an actual blemish of the soul, a serious lack of unselfish love which must at once be strenuously corrected) is given for several reasons—we have become, perhaps, too greedy of enjoyment of prayer: or we have come to take this joyousness of prayer for granted: or we have come to think we are uncommonly clever at knowing how to love and to pray; that we know so well how to do it that we can do it of our own power and capacity without God's assistance.
Or the trial may be sent not for any of these reasons, but solely in order to increase the strength and perseverance of our love to God, and of our Generosity.
This is one trial, and another is that God allows us to become convinced that He has nothing more to give us, He withdraws His graciousness from our apprehension; He leaves us as a tiny, unwanted, meaningless speck, alone in a vast universe. It would be idle to say that the soul does not suffer from this change; but these sufferings are just what she requires in order to develop courage, humility, endurance, love, and generosity. These two trials—the one when love is all dried up on our part, and the other when we think love must be all dried up on God's part—are the finest possible training and exercise for the soul, but they are only such if the soul tries ardently to overcome them: it is in the effort to overcome that virtue is learnt, progress made.
There is one most splendid remedy. Is it asking of God? No, it is giving to God. We give Him thanks and we bless Him, and we tell Him that we love Him, and we do it with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and this becomes possible even though a moment ago we were so far from Him, so tepid, seemingly so estranged: it becomes possible because we remember all the wonderful things that God has done for us and given us, and made for us, and suffered for us; and in remembering these it is impossible but that love and gratitude, like a torch of enthusiasm, will presently flare up in us.
If God never gives us another thing, we will adore Him for His kindness in the past, we will adore Him for Himself, for what He is. Desolation and tepidity vanish. Joy returns, the trial is over; but it will come again perhaps a few hours hence, or to-morrow, or every day for weeks: the remedy is ever to be reapplied, and the remedy when thoroughly applied never fails in immediate efficacy; but it has to be constantly repeated: never let the heart and mind forget this.
IX
The heart, mind, soul, and will work together and lead together the reasonable earthly existence; but there is another part of the soul, a higher part, which has its own intelligence, which leads no earthly existence, has no direct recognition of material being; thinks no earth-thoughts, judges by no man-made standards, sins no earth-sins. Has this part of the soul, then, never sinned? It feels that it has sinned, though it cannot say how or when, but it feels that this sin was direct as between itself and God, and is the cause of its separation from God; and it feels this sin to have been an infidelity. It is with this part of the soul that we sin the unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost, which cannot be sinned by mere natural man: (here we touch the mystery of the two orders of sinning which, to the initiated, are seen both to be covered by the same commandments). This higher part of the soul mourns and longs for God with a terrible longing, and can be consoled, satisfied, by God only; He communicates Himself to this part of the soul. Sins of heart and mind do not injure it, but retard it: it cannot be corrupted by material living, because it does not connect itself directly with earth-living, it "responds" to God alone; but earthly sins delay it, paralyse its powers, postpone indefinitely its return to God. Is it this part of the soul which we ordinarily speak of as the Will? It cannot be, since it is with our Will that we consent to earth-sins. Have we, then, two Wills? It is reasonable and it conforms with experience to say that we have two Wills—a Spirit-Will conducting Spirit-living, and a Reasoning or Mind Will, conducting the affairs of earth-living: the lower part of the soul is the meeting-place and the intermediary between these two (often opposing) Wills, it is the ground upon which they work and have their fruitions.
The Spirit-Will is the Will by which we finally become united to God. Before regeneration we are unaware in any keen degree of its existence; but it may exist for us in a vague and confused manner as an incomprehensible, undefined yearning: we cannot satisfy this yearning, because we do not know what it requires for its satisfaction. It is above conscience: conscience has its seat in the lower soul, there it deals with the affairs of earthly life. This Spirit-Will is so far above conscience (which can be used, cultivated, improved, or destroyed, according to our own desire) that it is not given into the keeping or cognisance of the "natural" man, but remains unknown, inoperative until reawakened and impregnated with renewed vigour by direct Act of God in the regenerated man. This awakening, this reinvigoration, would seem to be synonymous with the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.